VI. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. THE "Merry Wives of Windsor" is one of those delightfully happy plays of Shakespeare, beaming with sunshine and good humour, that makes one feel the better, the lighter, and the happier, for having seen or read it. It has a superadded charm, too, from the scene being purely English; and we all know how rare and how precious English sunshine is, both literally and metaphorically. The "Merry Wives" may be designated the "sunshine" of domestic life, as the "As You Like It" is the "sunshine" of romantic life. The out-door character that pervades both plays gives to them their tone of buoyancy and enjoyment, and true holiday feeling. We have the meeting of Shallow and Slender and Page in the streets of Windsor, who saunter on, chatting of the "fallow grey-hound, and of his being out-run on Cotsal;" and, still strolling on, they propose the match between Slender and "sweet Ann Page." Then Ann brings wine out of doors to them; though her father, with the genuine feeling of old English hospitality, presses them to come into his house, and enjoy it with a "hot venison pasty to dinner." And she afterwards comes out into the garden to bid Master Slender to table, where, we may imagine, he has been lounging about, in the hope of the fresh air relieving his sheepish embarrassment. When Doctor Caius bids his servant bring him his rapier, he answers, "'Tis ready, sir, here in the porch,"-conveying the idea of a room leading at once into the open air -such a room as used to be called "a summer parlour." Then we hear of Ann Page being at a "farm-house a-feasting;" and we have Mrs Page leading her little boy William to school; and Sir Hugh Evans sees people coming "from Frogmore over the stile this way;" and we find that Master Ford "is this morning gone a-birding." Even the very headings to the scenes breathe of dear, lovely English scenery"Windsor Park"-"A field near Frogmore." They talk, too, of Datchet Lane; and Sir John Falstaff is "slighted into the river." And, with this, come thronging visions of the "silver Thames," and some of those exquisite leafy nooks on its banks, with the cawing of rooks; and its little islands, crowned with the dark and glossy-leaved alder; and barges lapsing on its tranquil tide. To crown all, the story winds up with a plot to meet in Windsor Park at midnight, to trick the fat knight beneath "Herne's oak." The whole play, indeed, is, as it were, a village, or even a homestead pastoral. The dramatis persona, too, perfectly harmonise, and are in strict keeping with the scene. They are redolent of health and good humour-that moral and physical "sunshine." There are the two "Merry Wives" themselves. What a picture we have of buxom, laughing, ripe beauty! ready for any frolic "that may not sully the chariness of their honesty." That jealous-pate, Ford, ought to have been sure of his wife's integrity and goodness, from her being so transparent-charactered and cheerful; for your insincere and double-dealing people are sure to betray, some time or other, the drag that dishonesty claps upon the wheel of their conduct. The career of a deceitful person is never uniform. In the sequel, however, Ford does make a handsome atonement-that of a frank apology to the party whom he had abused by his suspicions; and he winds up the play with the rest, not the least happy of the group from having an enfranchised heart. He says well : "Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt. I rather will suspect the sun with cold Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand, In him that was of late a heretic, As firm as faith." Shakespeare also says, "The husband is to blame if the wife do fall." But, good heaven! what a donkey a jealous man is, morally as well as politically! He is a donkey as regards his wife, if she be dishonest; for he gives her every advantage over him, by putting her on her guard to outwit him. But I think that, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, where the marriage-knot has been broken, we may depend upon one of two things, either that the woman did not give her heart, only her hand; or that she has been chilled by coldness or want of confidence in her partner. For I assume it as an axiom, that, where a woman does love, nothing can shake the constancy of her attachment. The Duke in "Twelfth Night" says : "However we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, I confess that I have so little respect for a jealous man, and so much of the mischief of "old Harry" in me, that (but for the woman's peace) I would keep his steam at high pressure. Then, there is Page, the very personification of hearty English hospitality. You feel the tight grasp of his hand, and see the honest sparkle of his eye, as he leads in the wranglers with, "Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink |